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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'They tried to sell a car to someone they knew had no license',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/23.jpg" alt="An automotive sales event" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I was in a crowd in some sort of public building, like a store or something.
		I&apos;m not sure exactly what it was.
		I had a credit card, and I found it was repulsed from the floor.
		I kept shoving it as far down in the air as my arm would allow without my bending over, and the card was pressed up hard against my hand, as if by a magnet.
		The difference was though that this magnetic-like force wasn&apos;t polar.
		If I let the card go, it floated up at a specific height, but didn&apos;t try to flip itself over, then fly toward the floor at full force.
		As I pushed the card down, the force pushing it up was so strong that the card was bending and becoming ruined in my hand.
		The contours of my hand allowed parts of the card to travel upward more than others, and that was the card&apos;s demise.
		I was way too amazed by the oddity of it all to care though.
	</p>
	<p>
		The people around me saw me struggle to push the card down repeatedly, and seemed to think I was nuts.
		They couldn&apos;t see that there was this invisible force I was playing with.
		They just saw me making odd motions with my arm.
		So tried to show one particular stranger who seemed to think I was weirder than the others what was going on.
		I brought the card closer to them, but the force vanished beneath the card.
		I&apos;d found the edge of the force!
		Excited, I started trying to find the <strong>*shape*</strong> of the repulsive force.
		A thug seemed to come out of nowhere though, and didn&apos;t seem to like what I was doing.
		They didn&apos;t know what the force was, so they didn&apos;t care that I was playing with it.
		But when I found the edge of it, they realised, partly, what was going on.
		There was something buried under the floor there, and I now knew too much.
	</p>
	<p>
		I got the impression it wasn&apos;t safe to stay, so I left.
		Later, I encountered the thug&apos;s employer, who was more adamant about killing me.
		I was in some sort of very large house.
		I would cal it a mansion, but it was not at all fancy, especially on the outside.
		On the outside, it was just one long brick-shaped building, but with a sloped roof.
		The boss was tied up dealing with some matters, so I ran to the second floor, and climbed out a window.
		I tried to close the window as far as I could from the outside to cover my tracks as much as feasible, then moved over to another spit where I could climb up better.
		I&apos;d chosen the wrong window, and had come out at the only protrusion from the brick-like shape.
		I needed to work my way to the side of that, where I could reach the roof.
		I popped open another window to use as a foothold, but I heard the first window I opened come flying open.
		The boss&apos;d finally come for me.
		I hadn&apos;t been fast enough.
	</p>
	<p>
		I guess I was waking up at this point, as the reality of the dream started to fade and I started exerting force I shouldn&apos;t&apos;ve been able to.
		I flew up to the roof, ignoring the window I&apos;d tried to use as a foothold before, then flew away from the house entirely.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="lost">
	<h2>Lost mobile</h2>
	<p>
		Okay, I know I shouldn&apos;t have done this, but really wanted to expedite the process of getting this mobile back to it&apos;s owner.
		So I set up the email application, so I could snoop in the inbox.
		I wasn&apos;t going to read any of it, but I wanted to see if there was mail from <strong>*anyone*</strong> in there besides me.
		If this is an unused inbox, it doesn&apos;t matter how long I wait.
		They&apos;re never going to respond.
	</p>
	<p>
		My hunch was right.
		There were two letters from me, and no letters from anyone else.
	</p>
	<p>
		So I sent an $a[SMS] to their mother, briefly explaining the situation, and asking them to have their child email me to arrange a meet.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dealership">
	<h2>Pushiest car dealership I&apos;ve ever spoken to</h2>
	<p>
		The missionaries sent me an email this morning cancelling on me again.
		I thought I wouldn&apos;t have time to head to the dealership to claim the wristwatch I&apos;d won until Monday, but with no pressing engagements for the day, I figured I&apos;d head over there now.
	</p>
	<p>
		I frequently claim these dealership prizes when the fliers get sent to me.
		I&apos;ve pretty much got a routine of how I handle them.
		First, I tell them I got a flier saying I&apos;ve won whatever their small prize is.
		I make it clear I know even beforehand that I haven&apos;t won any of the big prizes that they want you to think you&apos;ve won.
		Then they start trying to test the waters so they can figure out how to get me to buy.
		One of the first questions they always ask is what I&apos;m driving now.
		I&apos;m always upfront with them and describe my bicycle.
		Last time, I said it was a purple glitter bike.
		This time, a black bicycle with green trim.
		I always make sure they&apos;re aware it&apos;s a bicycle though, not a motor vehicle, then when they ask why I don&apos;t have a car or if I&apos;d be interested in one, I explain that the $a[DMV] refuses to issue me a license.
		Right then and there, they usually realise they can&apos;t possibly convince me to buy a car, so they stop trying.
		They cough up the prize I won, then I&apos;m on my way.
	</p>
	<p>
		This time, things took a turn for the weird.
		The salesperson I was dealing with said they&apos;ve got a friend that works at the $a[DMV].
		They agreed with me that the restriction on getting a license without telephone service is stupid and arbitrary, and said that their friend is often able to take care of little $a[DMV] problems.
		They think they can get this solved too.
		I&apos;m not convinced, but it certainly doesn&apos;t hurt to try, especially as it means bringing up the problem to the $a[DMV] from yet another angle, as well as spreading the fact the problem exists a little more.
		From there, they asked if I&apos;d think about buying a car if they were able to get the $a[DMV] situation resolved.
		I told them I made no promises to purchase, as I&apos;d need more time to think about it.
		I&apos;d come to the dealership thinking there was no way for me to buy a car, so I hadn&apos;t thought about whether it was a good idea to buy or not.
		They went to get the boss.
		Why&apos;d they go get the boss?
		The problem hasn&apos;t been resolved, so I still can&apos;t buy.
		When the boss arrived, they asked what I was looking for, so I explained that I couldn&apos;t buy, as I don&apos;t even have a driver license.
		That was all well and good, and they left to go send the salesperson back to work with me.
		At this point, the boss should have known they couldn&apos;t get a sale out of me.
		That&apos;ll be important a bit later.
	</p>
	<p>
		The salesperson wanted to show me some cars, so I agreed to look.
		I reiterated that I can&apos;t buy because I have no license, but I&apos;d be fine looking.
		What they said was the first car they&apos;d show me turned out to be the only one they&apos;d end up showing me.
		It had a back-up camera so you could more-easily avoid hitting things behind you.
		That was pretty cool.
		It also had an auxiliary port for playing your own music through the car&apos;s speakers.
		I imagine the auxiliary port&apos;s mostly standard these days, but I don&apos;t see the insides of very many modern cars, so it seemed pretty cool to me.
		They had me test drive the thing, but all the while, they knew I had no license and thus couldn&apos;t buy the thing.
		The license issue hadn&apos;t been resolved, it&apos;d only been spoken about.
	</p>
	<p>
		They really wanted to run my credit.
		I probably shouldn&apos;t&apos;ve let them, because there was no way I could buy the thing.
		However, I guess I didn&apos;t want to burn a bridge that even might lead to a resolution with the $a[DMV].
		So they drove me home to get my Social Security card, so they could run the credit check.
		It seems I have a 740 credit score today, so that&apos;s not too bad.
		To run my credit by the bank though, they had to make up a bogus telephone number to put on the application; a fact they didn&apos;t divulge until <strong>*after*</strong> running my credit.
		They said I could get the car for \$250 $a[USD] per month, but didn&apos;t tell me how many months I&apos;d be paying.
		Next, they tried to four-square me.
		Something made them stop before they&apos;d even really started, but the fact that they wanted to use the four-square worksheet was evidence that the dealership is shady.
		I forget what exactly&apos;s wrong with those, but there&apos;s this dealership owner that explains all the inside stuff dealerships do to screw customers because they don&apos;t actually like customers getting screwed.
		Also, no doubt, because it makes their own dealership look better, because they don&apos;t engage in those practices.
		They explained what&apos;s wrong with a four-square, and how dealerships that aren&apos;t trying to back you into a corner don&apos;t use them.
	</p>
	<p>
		The boss came back and started really trying to push the car I&apos;d just driven.
		I explained once more that I don&apos;t have a license, so I can&apos;t buy the thing.
		They started talking about how because I have state-issued $a[ID], I can still buy insurance for the car, so I should buy the car.
		Um.
		What?
		I can insure the care, but I can&apos;t drive it on the streets, so I should buy it?
		What kind of logic is that!?
		After I explained several times that it doesn&apos;t matter if I can insure the vehicle because I can&apos;t drive it, they eventually made the claim that I could drive it as long as I have $a[ID].
		It doesn&apos;t matter that it&apos;s non-driver-license $a[ID], it&apos;ll be just fine.
		What?
		That&apos;s not how driving laws work.
		After a bit longer, they told me they&apos;re a Texan, and said in Texas, you don&apos;t need a driver license.
		They weren&apos;t quite sure about Oregon laws.
		No.
		In Oregon, you need a driver license to drive.
		And actually, a quick Web search later showed that Texas offers both driver licenses and non-driver-license $a[ID] cards, meaning it&apos;s very unlikely you can legally drive in Texas without a driver license either.
		If you could, why would they have separate driver and non-driver forms of $a[ID] cards?
		They were trying to do whatever it took to sell me a car, even though I couldn&apos;t legally drive it.
	</p>
	<p>
		Finally, they started trying to look at the actual problem.
		Well, not really.
		But closer.
		They asked why I had no license, and I explained the situation.
		Instead of trying to tackle the actual issue, which is the $a[DMV]&apos;s idiotic policy, they started trying to figure out what it&apos;d take to fully comply with the $a[DMV]&apos;s idiocy and still get me a license.
		They even offered to buy me a month of telephone service so I could take the drive test, then said I could just throw out the telephone afterwards.
		(Now that I think of it, there&apos;s a chance the boss would have added the price of the telephone service to the price of the car, and I&apos;d end up paying for the service they could see I clearly didn&apos;t want.
		But maybe that&apos;s just me being paranoid.)
		They just couldn&apos;t grasp that that&apos;s the exact <strong>*opposite*</strong> of what needs to happen.
		I need to fight the $a[DMV] about this once I have more time, which probably means once I&apos;ve completed my schooling.
		I need to hire a lawyer and get the policy fixed for future drivers.
		It&apos;s not just me at stake here.
		The boss just couldn&apos;t get that treating the symptom ahead of getting the underlying problem fixed was a terrible and short-sighted idea.
		Finally, the boss tried to guilt trip me.
		They&apos;d gotten me what they claimed to be a great deal from the bank.
		If I didn&apos;t jump on a deal that great, they&apos;d look bad with the bank for even having run my credit at all.
		I must not have wanted the car to begin with.
		I was upfront about that with them from the beginning though!
		If they try to go against what they know my wishes are, that&apos;s their problem if they look bad because of it.
		I&apos;m not convinced the bank actually cares that they failed to close the sale though.
		It was probably just a lie.
	</p>
	<p>
		Wow.
		Normally, when I tell dealerships I don&apos;t have a license, that&apos;s the end of it.
		They give me the prize, and I&apos;m free to go.
		I was stuck there for <strong>*two hours*</strong> while they jumped through a bunch of hoops to try to squeeze me into a car that I couldn&apos;t legally use.
		That&apos;s their problem though.
		I accomplished my main goal of a bike ride, my secondary goal of spreading awareness of the $a[DMV]&apos;s idiotic policy, my tertiary goal of getting a wristwatch, and my quaternary goal of having something to write about in my journal today.
		That much time lost certainly wasn&apos;t worth the watch alone, but spreading awareness definitely was.
		They think they lost a sale due to the $a[DMV]&apos;s policy.
		Maybe they now have a negative opinion of said policy.
		Well, either that or they think I&apos;m that weirdo without a telephone.
		Even more than spreading awareness, I&apos;ve now got quite the story for my journal.
		I&apos;m always happy to get weblog fuel.
	</p>
	<p>
		Speaking of the wristwatch, it wasn&apos;t at all as pictured on the flier.
		The flier showed metal-strap watches.
		The watches actually offered had straps of leather though, so being vegan, I can&apos;t actually wear one.
		The main salesperson I dealt with gave me two of them too, one with a more-manly design and a longer strap length, and one with a more-feminine design but a shorter strap length.
		I&apos;ll probably give them away at the next $a[EUGLUG] meeting if someone wants them.
		I can&apos;t wear them myself, but there&apos;s no sense them going to waste.
		The salesperson says they&apos;re going to talk to their friend at the $a[DMV] and maybe contact me on Monday about getting a license.
		I don&apos;t think they&apos;ll actually contact me back, but it&apos;ll be something interesting to look forward to.
		I believe they&apos;ll talk to their friend, but the friend isn&apos;t going to have a way around the moronic policy.
		It&apos;d be nice to have the salesperson follow up with me and confirm they even tried, but it&apos;s doubtful that&apos;ll happens.
	</p>
	<p>
		I learned a couple things from the salesperson today.
		First, when they host these sales with prizes given to everyone that gets a flier sent to them, they&apos;re planning to take any unsold cars to auction afterwards.
		What I take from that is that you have a better chance of talking them down in price at one of these events.
		They&apos;re trying to clear things out before the auction, so they probably don&apos;t make as much from a given vehicle at auction.
		They&apos;re better off cutting you a deal at the event.
	</p>
	<p>
		Secondly, the prize numbers are sent out sequentially by address.
		If your number is one off from one of the winning numbers, your neighbour won that prize.
		The salesperson told me a story about a person they&apos;d talked to at a previous prize/sales event who was one number off.
		They explained the situation and told them to tell their neighbours to check their numbers.
		The salesperson knew they weren&apos;t supposed to do that, but the person seemed so nice that they didn&apos;t want someone they knew to miss out.
		The person lived between two relatives, so it turned out someone in the family had won big if they just dropped by to claim the prize.
		The next day, the salesperson heard yelling at work, and went to investigate.
		The person from before was back with the winning flier, but the other salespeople wouldn&apos;t give them the prize because they couldn&apos;t prove they lived at that address and wouldn&apos;t bring by the person that did live there.
		They then ratted out the salesperson that had told them to have their neighbours check their numbers, getting the salesperson that only wanted to help them in trouble.
		It turned out they hadn&apos;t told their family, but instead gone digging through their recycling bin for the flier.
		They wanted to secretly claim the prize for themself, and the salespeople were making it impossible to do that.
		Finally, they left and returned with their parent, that had actually been the winner.
		Even despite the attempt at deception, the parent split the winnings with the child.
		The child then flipped off the helpful salesperson, who wasn&apos;t even one of the ones trying to deny them the prize, as if that salesperson had wronged them.
		Wow.
		Talk about a lack of gratitude!
		The salesperson said they didn&apos;t think they would risk such an episode again.
		That person ruined the advice-giving for future sales.
		However, my number was so far off that no one living anywhere near me had won a prize besides the default watch.
		I guess the risk of cluing me in, while having no immediate reward, also carried almost no risk.
		It&apos;s interesting to know the mailed numbers aren&apos;t randomised like you&apos;d think they&apos;d be.
		They probably only randomise the winning numbers.
		In the future, I&apos;ll know to let my neighbours know if my number is close to the winning one.
	</p>
	<p>
		Speaking of the drawing, it turns out whoever set it up doesn&apos;t know basic maths.
		On these drawings, they always present you with a list of prises and some game to play to see if you&apos;ve won one of them, though you can&apos;t figure out which you&apos;ve won until you go in and let them try to sell you a car.
		They divulge the odds for each prize, probably to fulfil some legal obligation, which I appreciate.
		However, when you look at the odds, you find that everyone wins something.
		The little prize is deceitful bait to make you think you&apos;ve potentially won one of the bigger prize.
		There&apos;s a one in whatever chance to win each of the prizes save for the small one, and all other fliers without exception win the small prize.
		This time, there were five prises.
		You were stated to have a 1:80000 chance of winning each of the first four prizes.
		The odds for winning the fifth prize, the wristwatch, was said to be 79995:80000.
		Adding that up, there&apos;s a 79999:80000 chance of winning one of the listed prizes.
		That leaves a 1:80000 chance of either not winning any prize or winning some unlisted prize.
		I knew going in that they&apos;d messed up their numbers, but going in and seeing their prize board confirmed it.
		Sure enough, as expected, the big prizes were assigned winning numbers and the watch was listed as being for all unlisted numbers.
		I guess I shouldn&apos;t expect this particular dealership to be competent though, seeing as they were trying to push a car onto someone with no license.
	</p>
	<p>
		I think I&apos;m starting to see through their prize game more clearly.
		I knew they were using the prizes as bait.
		<strong>*Everyone of reasonable intelligence*</strong> knows they;re using the prizes as bait.
		I don&apos;t think that&apos;s as deep as the story goes though.
		I think they&apos;re targeting a specific type of person: the gullible.
		They try to trick you into thinking you&apos;ve got a good chance of winning the big prizes by putting the odds in the fine print.
		Most people seem to throw these fliers out without a second thought, judging by the large number of them in the recycling can near the mailboxes at my complex.
		Many of the people that actually decide to drop by are probably the ones who actually buy into the trick.
		That&apos;s who will be easiest to sell a car to.
		That&apos;s who they want to lure in.
		Of course, there are people like me that go in telling the salespeople that we got fliers telling us we won [insert smallest prize here].
		And I assume there are people that understand the odd enough to know they likely didn&apos;t win big, but don&apos;t want to waste the chance just in case.
		However, the vast majority that drop by are probably gullible, and that&apos;s exactly the type of person the dealership wants to take advantage of.
		That&apos;s why these drawings are constructed the way they are.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			What do you mean by content security?
			It that just restricting access of certain information to certain people?
			I agree that making users log in to view certain types of data, such as how much money is in their account, is a good idea.
			However, like you said, it&apos;s a huge step backwards in terms of privacy.
			You shouldn&apos;t need to log in for viewing any information that isn&apos;t sensitive.
		</p>
		<p>
			I agree that keeping user data to a minimum is a good idea.
			You say storing extra data about users makes you a bigger target for attack, and that&apos;s true.
			It&apos;s also just better for privacy not to have information you don&apos;t need on people.
			Even in a world with no crackers, it&apos;d be better not to gather extra information on people.
		</p>
		<p>
			I don&apos;t think having one&apos;s domain blacklisted relates to migration though.
			Migration usually involves transferring between machines, not between names.
			I suppose migrating between domain names happens as well.
			However, this doesn&apos;t tend to incur a performance hit, as the physical machines servicing requests remain unchanged.
			When switching domains, the main thing to keep in mind is that the server at the old domain should redirect to the site at the new domain (usually on the same server) for a period of time.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="nails">
	<h2>Nail colour</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve had a bottle of nail polish that didn&apos;t have enough left to use, but I felt wasteful just throwing it out.
		I also had a few colours that I don&apos;t really think I&apos;d enjoy using.
		And finally, I had the remnants of the three bottles of gooey polish.
		I was able to stretch the use of the liquid polish by shaking the bottle to get more polish onto the brush, but that doesn&apos;t work with the gooey polish, so I just sort of kept the bottles around.
	</p>
	<p>
		One of the gooey polishes was too far gone for even me to think was salvageable.
		So I just cleaned it out with fingernail polish remover.
		With the rest of the polishes mentioned, I tried something interesting.
		First, I consolidated like colours together.
		It emptied a few bottles and saved me space.
		But after that ...
		I started &quot;consolidating&quot; colours that didn&apos;t go together.
		I started with colours that were only somewhat off, but moved on to putting very different colours together as my experiments failed to produce anything ugly.
		I poured regular polish into the gooey polish too, in hopes that the good polish would loosen up the gooey polish.
		Annoyingly, wet polish tends to start breaking up fully-dried polish already on my nails, so why shouldn&apos;t the same sort of effect apply in the bottle with the gooey polish?
		One bottle I ended up with was a dark, but somehow also desaturated purple.
		It was much nicer than the nearly-full bottle of purple I&apos;d sacrificed to the mixture.
		The original just didn&apos;t go well with my skin at all, and my mother described it as making my nails look bruised.
		This new colour though ...
		I&apos;ve gotten more compliments on my nail colour today than I have any other day.
		When I get low on polish, I think I might get colours specifically to mix and get custom colours not found in stores.
		I&apos;ve never seen this purple anywhere, for example, but it looks great.
		I know it contains a mainstream purple, a flesh tone, and a little brown.
		I think it has a tiny bit of copper in it too, but I couldn&apos;t swear to that.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
